


And yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity

by mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 13:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrinneyFriday/pseuds/mygalfriday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wants to leave him with hope, with love. She wants him to know she was happy, despite it all and maybe even because of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity

**Author's Note:**

> All italicized quotations at the beginning (or end) of scenes are taken from The Time Traveler’s Wife – this is what happens when I reread that book and have feels. Story title from His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvel.

_I never wanted to have anything in my life worth losing. But it’s too late for that._

 

As a little girl – both times, really – she tried not to become attached to anything, be it people or places or possessions. She learned very quickly that they could all be taken away in the blink of an eye.  Melody had loved a teddy bear, with soft fur and a velvet bowtie, one she’d had for as long as she could remember. It made her feel safe, when she curled up in the cold, dark orphanage at night and shrank from the shadows. Madame Kovarian had found it on one of her inspections, before Melody had the chance to hide it away like she usually did, and she’d destroyed it right in front of her. _You’re a weapon, Melody, not a little girl. You have no use for toys_.

 

Mels had loved Amy and Rory, her best friends in the whole world, the only people who had ever shown her the slightest kindness. She knew, deep down, that they were her parents but it had seemed like a far off memory, too distant to mean anything. It was difficult to see them that way when they were her age – Amy wild and beautiful and boy-crazy, Rory bumbling and so far away from the Centurion he would become, chasing after her mother with hope in his eyes that never faded. But they’re gone too.

 

Of course, they’re around, and River can see them whenever she wants but they’re no longer her best friends. That had changed in Berlin. But neither are they really her parents either. They try but she knows it can’t be easy, being younger than your daughter who also used to be your best friend and saw you cry over boys or get beat up on the playground. She knows they still care for her but it’s different now, so far from the comfortable, warm affection she is so used to from them. It is restrained, hesitant, as if they want to love her but don’t quite know how.

 

Often, she wonders how anyone can love her. She hardens herself, puts as much distance as she can between her and the things that can hurt her just because she loves them. However much Kovarian tried, she’d never been able to extract little Melody’s hearts and she wore them for a long time, bruised and battered on her sleeve.

 

She knows better now and tries to hide them, but the trouble with having a future, back-to-front relationship with a time traveling alien is that wherever she hides her hearts, he still knows she has them. She tries with everything in her to resist the Doctor but he woos her like a man with only one mission in life. He fills her university days, posing as a professor in one of her lectures to use the entire class time to flirt with her until the whole room is abuzz with whispered rumors and River’s cheeks are bright red – she never did figure out if it was from anger or embarrassment. He sends paper airplanes soaring across the library to get caught in her hair, his giggle echoing in the cavernous room as she untangles it to read _hello dear_ in swirling Gallifreyan, looking up to find him nowhere to be seen. He leaves gifts on her desk that no one else would find unabashedly romantic but River does – a piece of tile from a long buried Roman bath, a paintbrush that once belonged to Van Gogh, a hunk of brick from the Great Pyramids that she uses as a paper weight. He never leaves a note, but she knows.

 

She finds little annotations in the margins of all her textbooks, most of which are derogatory comments on the absolutely _wrong_ content, the failings of archeology in general or how much she’s going to loathe her professor this semester. But sometimes, he just steals poetry from someone else, leaving her snatches of lines that send her racing to the library to find the rest of the poem. _An hundred years should go to praise thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze…_

 

Slowly but surely, River starts to loosen her grip on her hearts, trusting him with a little more of them with every visit, every crumpled paper airplane and fragment of poetry. The night before her finals, he tugs her from pouring over her notes and sweeps her away to far off, strange places with that cocky little smirk and a tweak of that bowtie and River has no choice. She wouldn’t have wanted one if she did.

 

Melody knew better than to get attached but as the Doctor drops her off and kisses her cheek goodnight, the glow of the TARDIS streaming into her dorm room, River thinks she might make an exception.

 

-

 

_It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing._

 

It isn’t supposed to happen like this. _She_ is supposed to die before he does. It’s how she has always imagined things would go because she could not – _would_ not – contemplate any other possibility. She had just assumed that with her reckless tendencies and only one regeneration left, she would never see the fall of her Doctor. But here on the Fields of Trenzalore, she realizes how naïve she had been.

 

Two days ago, he dropped her off at her cell after their honeymoon, a self-satisfied smirk on his face as he stumbled back into the TARDIS after one last goodbye kiss. He’d been so smug, so happy. And now he is older, with graying hair and a purple frock coat in place of the tweed, but still her Doctor. He trembles violently in her arms, wounded and pale, his hair matted with his own blood. He doesn’t look at the destruction around him – he only has eyes for her. His gaze on her face never wavers and she whispers to him softly, stroking his hair and trying to keep the tears out of her voice even as they spill down her cheeks.

 

“It’s going to be alright,” she lies, inspecting the wound again with a shaking hand, hoping that maybe it had changed - maybe it had gotten better. For once, she wishes she hadn’t given him _all_ of her lives in Berlin, so that she had the rest to give to him now. “You’re going to be just fine, sweetie.”

 

He offers her a faint smile, as if he sees right through her and finds her Lying Face admirable. He taught her well, after all. “I-I need to -” He coughs and blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. River wipes it away with her fingers, tears blurring her eyes. “I need to tell you something.”

 

She shakes her head, sniffling. “Hush now,” she breathes. “Save your strength, my love.”

 

His breath rattling in his chest, he ignores her, suddenly gripping her wrist with surprising strength and whispering fiercely, “I love you, River.”

 

She caresses his cheek with her bloodied hand and sobs. “No. Don’t leave me, sweetie, please -”

 

Leaning into her touch, he rasps, “You h-have so much still to c-come.” He coughs again, violently. “You watch us run, m-my River.”

 

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says, and she wants to shake him, tell him that he can’t die first, she won’t allow it – how can he expect her to ever look at his younger self’s face again and not see this? How long will she carry this secret between them, like an albatross around her neck?

 

He keeps his eyes on hers and the unwanted thought occurs to her that he wants his wife to be the last thing he sees.  The light is fading from those ancient hazel eyes with frightening speed. Never has she felt so helpless, not even when she was Melody, scared and alone. This – watching the man she loves suffer and die – is so much worse than her own pain could ever be.

 

On his last breath, the Doctor whispers something so faintly that she barely hears it, but _oh_ , it is heartbreaking and beautiful and carries the weight of worlds, of universes. It makes her hearts ache in her chest. His eyes flutter shut and she shakes her head in denial, pushing his hair back from his forehead and waiting for his eyes to open again. “Come on, open your eyes you great, useless idiot.” She beats on his chest with her fists, slick with his blood and when that doesn’t work, she lays her head over his hearts and waits. “Please, my love.”

 

He’s just tired. He’s _resting_ but he’s not – he _can’t_ be – she won’t _let_ him.

 

But there is no reassuring double beat of his hearts, no faint rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. There is nothing. He is gone and someone took him from her. The rage wells up with the grief, choking her as it wars for attention. She wants to kill something, namely whoever is responsible, but right now she would settle for just about anything. She just wants someone else to feel this, this empty ache clawing at the inside of her chest and up her throat like an angry, vengeful being. But the field is empty of all life except hers, and she will not leave him.

 

When golden light begins to shine so brightly she sees it behind her closed eyes, she opens them and lifts herself off his unmoving chest with a gasp. Light spills from his fingertips and spreads outwards, a new life waiting to begin. River remembers an alley in New York and an office in Berlin, she remembers exhilaration and pain until she broke free, like a swimmer breaking the surface of the water. Everything felt new and brighter, more alive than anything she’d ever felt.

 

Regenerative light explodes around them, setting the whole field ablaze in its glow but she refuses to be budged. Nothing will take her from his side, least of all the very gift she’d given him, so long ago. She holds onto the Doctor as he transforms in her arms but she shuts her eyes to the change, unable to bear watching the face she loves so well leave her.

 

At last, it fades and River swallows hard, bracing herself as the field falls quiet once again, save for the sound of _two_ Time Lords breathing. More than the face changes upon regeneration – clothing and food preferences, personality and _feelings_. He’ll be a whole new person with the same old memories and she can’t help but wonder – will this man love her less? _At all_?

 

Putting on her bravest face, she opens her eyes and looks down, her breath catching in her throat. There is a brand new man in her arms with dark hair and eyes, a significantly smaller chin. He’s broader in the shoulders but he’s still wearing that familiar bowtie and it’s all _wrong wrong wrong wrong_. Where is her Doctor, her ridiculous, lanky, floppy-haired Doctor? She wants him _back_.

 

This new man smiles up at her, stops, runs his tongue over his teeth and hums his approval before trying again, this time brighter and just a bit cocky. There is something familiar about it that eases the ache in her chest, just a little. “Hi honey.”

 

She sniffles and wipes at her cheeks, smearing blood across her skin. “Hello sweetie.”

 

-

 

_I won’t ever leave you, even though you’re always leaving me_

 

He is always, in some sense or another, leaving her behind. Every night she is in prison, he comes to her and they travel for hours or days or weeks, maybe even months, before he drops her off again before morning. River loves those adventures more than anything, cherishes every single moment with her husband and writes down everything she can remember in her diary once he leaves. And he is always leaving.

 

She knows he has to, that being in prison is the only thing keeping the Silence from looking for him again and it is a penance she pays gladly for what she has done. But part of her wonders, even if she didn’t need to play the part of the grieving but guilty widow, would he stay with her always? She knows the Doctor and she has certainly done her research. No one ever stays for long.

 

She wants to be different. No one has forever but she wants to stay as long as she can, to travel with him and make sure he doesn’t tire of her. Because of this, it is always her who refuses to travel with him for long periods of time, always her who pilots the TARDIS back to Stormcage while the Doctor pouts, sitting on the jumpseat by the console and swinging his legs like a little boy forced to abandon his playtime to do his schoolwork. She kisses him goodbye, smiles against his mouth when he pulls her in close and holds her tightly. She makes him leave while he still wants her, so that he can miss her. So that he will come back.

 

But sometimes, he leaves not because she makes him or because he has to. Sometimes he leaves her by forgetting, and those are the times when she hates him most. She loves him always, but sometimes she hates him too – for leaving her in the dark with nothing but her memories to cling to for warmth and comfort. She sees a Doctor who knows her less and less near the end of their timeline and the Doctor she does see eyes her with mistrust and fear in his gaze. Part of her, the part that understands that he’s young, that he doesn’t know, wants to gather him into her arms and tell him that he shouldn’t be afraid. They’re going to be amazing. That part of her is River. But Mels, the angry young woman so tired of having things taken from her wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him, to shout and demand that he remember things he hasn’t even done yet.

 

Loving him hurts on these days, but there is no other option but to swallow the bitter pill life has dealt her. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. She cannot leave him, no matter the pain in her hearts. Just as her life before she met him was dedicated to killing him and ridding the world of his influence, her life now is to protect him, to love him and make him see that he does so much good. He is not perfect, but he is hers, and she will not give him up.

 

Near the end of their timeline, her battered blue book becomes less of a diary and more of a time capsule, stored with all her fondest memories. It is her life raft, the only thing keeping her afloat as she drifts further and further away from the man she loves – the man who loves _her_. She reads of their adventures over and over again, devouring the words and telling herself that it happened. It was real and they ran so very far and loved so very much.

 

No matter how dark things get, the Doctor had told her so long ago, no matter what I say, you must remember, my River.

 

She hugs the book to her chest. It was _real_.

 

-

 

_Sometimes I’m happy when he’s gone, but I’m always happy when he returns_

 

It isn’t often, but occasionally, one version of her Doctor drops her off at her cell just in time for another one to materialize and whisk her away again. There are times when she doesn’t get the chance to miss him, and those times are wonderful and exhilarating and _cherished_. There are other times when he is gone for days or weeks or months at a time and she misses him like a phantom limb, but she does not wait for him. River admires and respects her mother, but she refuses to be her, always looking to the sky and wondering when the Doctor will finally remember to visit again. She loves that man more than her own life but he’s a terrible timekeeper.

 

At first, it scared her when there were long gaps between his visits. When he picked her up after those absences, she was always angry at being left behind, too stubborn to tell him she’d just been afraid he’d finally decided not to come back. But eventually, she learns to not only accept his long absences, but to be grateful for them. She uses those times to create a life of her own, an identity that does not revolve around him and it’s freeing. She has spent long enough not living her own life and she won’t do it again. Not even for the Doctor.

 

She learns most about how to become his River when he is not there. She reads everything she can get her hands on, critiques almost all of it, devises 1468 different ways to escape Stormcage and tries them all, each plan more creative and outrageous than the last. She rubs elbows with Marie Antoinette and flashes the physic paper she’d nicked from the TARDIS to get herself into all the best dig sites and rock concerts. And when she gets her pardon – it’s difficult to keep a woman in prison for the murder of a man who doesn’t exist – she becomes a professor and there is even less time to miss the Doctor than before.

 

There are times when she stands at her bedroom window at night, staring into the yard and willing the TARDIS to materialize, times when she misses him so much it’s all she can do to keep herself together, wondering as he gets younger and younger if he’ll ever come back, if she’ll ever see her Doctor again. But more often than not, she sits in the middle of her living room floor grading papers and drinking tea or crouches in the desert, getting sand and dust in her hair as she uses a small brush, a chisel and infinite amounts of patience and she is _glad_ for her solitude.

 

Her life with or without the Doctor is still a fulfilling life and she likes it. She likes being on her own, not having someone there to scowl at her when she filches a gold pocket watch from a man’s waistcoat – it didn’t belong to him anyway – or to just have the chance to breathe without catering to a man with the attention span of a toddler on a sugar rush. She is always fine without him, and sometimes, she is even happy. But that doesn’t mean her days aren’t better, brighter, whenever he comes to call. It also doesn’t mean that she always drops everything when she hears the sound of the TARDIS to start running toward it.

 

Sometimes, she lets him come looking for her instead.

 

-

 

_I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always._

 

They’ve been married for five years from her point of view and a very long time from his when it happens. They’d been to a party the night before on Artaris and escaped amidst gunfire after the appetizers had been served – River hadn’t even gotten the chance to fake being tipsy on champagne so she could fondle the Doctor in front of everyone – not that she needed an excuse, but sometimes it’s fun to pretend. When they make it back to the TARDIS breathless and exhilarated, the Doctor reaches for her and she smiles against his mouth.

 

“Mmm,” he hums. “You taste like -”

 

“If you’re about to tell me I taste like the appetizer you can stop right now,” she says, putting her finger to his lips.

 

He pouts. “Well you do.”

 

“I had fish!”

 

“I _like_ fish.”

 

River sighs and goes to find the mints.

 

When she wakes in the morning, tangled with her husband and feeling queasy, she climbs out of bed and stumbles to their en suite bathroom, bleary-eyed and sleepy. She makes it just in time to drop to her knees and heave into the toilet bowl, naked and trembling on the cold tile floor. She tries not to wake the Doctor but he’s beside her in an instant, gentle hand rubbing soothing circles on her back. When she’s finished, he flushes the toilet and settles beside her on the floor, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders.

 

“Feel better?”

 

She rests her head against his shoulder and shakes her head.

 

He presses his lips to her temple. “Must have been the fish.”

 

She scoffs. “You had the fish and you’re perfectly fine.”

 

He says nothing, suddenly tense at her side.

 

River looks up at him. “You don’t think…” She trails off, the thought too wonderful to say out loud. She’s been trying for months to conceive with a much younger Doctor, both of them over the moon at the prospect of a little Time Lord toddling around the TARDIS.

 

This older Doctor looks hesitant. “It’s just food poisoning, River. Don’t get your hopes up.”

 

She knows he’s right but she gets to her feet anyway, keeping the blanket around her naked shoulders as she walks hurriedly toward the TARDIS med-bay, the Doctor trailing behind her like a reluctant puppy. As the Old Girl scans her, River’s hearts pound and she tries not to think about anything. She tries not to think about her belly swelling and the Doctor following behind her like a worried mother hen, trying to discreetly take them to nice, safe, peaceful planets. She tries not to think about wearing a papoose on archaeological digs or cradling her child close while she fires a gun and ducks from plasma bursts. She tries not to think about having strange cravings for foods so bizarre that the things she eats disturb even the Doctor. She tries not to think about the Doctor lifting a miniature version of himself into his arms, smiling widely as he shows their child how to pilot the TARDIS, throwing playful glares at River when she tries to correct him.

 

She tries not to think about all these things but she does and she _wants_. She has been wanting for months.  A family with the Doctor – it sounds like some kind of wonderful dream. But maybe it isn’t.

 

The scanner beeps and she looks up at the screen with hope shining in her eyes, her head too full of fanciful thoughts of the future to notice that the Doctor doesn’t bother to glance up from staring at his feet. She reads the results quickly and her shoulders drop. Negative for pregnancy, positive for food poisoning.

 

Behind her, the Doctor clears his throat. “River -”

 

She ignores him. “Why aren’t you sick too then?”

 

“Your fish had sauce. Mine didn’t.”

 

Squaring her shoulders, she nods once. “You thought of that earlier, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And you let me hope.”

 

“Only because I wanted to hope too.”

 

If she turned around now, she knows she would see him staring at her with those puppy eyes, shoulders drooped and hands fidgeting, lost without a bowtie around his neck to fiddle with. But she doesn’t turn around, because if she does, she’s afraid she’ll break. She thinks of his lack of enthusiasm from the beginning, his reluctance to scan her and the complete absence of expectation in his eyes. _Don’t get your hopes up_ , he’d said.

 

“You’re older,” she says. “Much older than the man who bought a tiny fez last week for a baby we don’t even have yet.”

 

She hears him swallows, as if the memory pains him.

 

She doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to know but she has to. “Do we ever have a baby?”

 

“Spoil -”

 

“Don’t,” she snaps, eyes blazing as she finally turns to face him. “Don’t you bloody dare. Not about this.”

 

He ducks his head and looks up at her through his fringe, eyes ancient and so very sad with the loss of the dream they’d shared, however naively. “I’m sorry, River.”

 

Tears fill her eyes as she thinks of ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes, of tickling a soft, round belly and of late night feedings and watching the Doctor try to change a nappy. The look in her husband’s eyes tells her that this is something they will never have together and she sinks to the floor under the weight of the knowledge, the blanket heavy around her shoulders as she begins to cry.

 

The Doctor is at her side instantly, wrapping his arms around her and making soft, soothing noises into her ear. She knows that it hurts him, seeing her like this. It hurts him that he can’t give her what she wants. She wants someone who will stay, whose love will never fade. She wants someone who won’t forget.

 

-

 

_We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection or steal the joy of this perfect moment._

 

For their 125th anniversary, he takes her to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. Though, for some reason, he seems to be under the impression that she will be content to merely watch. River has never been much of a spectator.

 

She lulls him into a false sense of security for a while, letting him wrap his arms around her waist and rest his chin on her shoulder as they stand with the crowd outside of the barricades, watching the preparations. The runners are dressed in white clothing with red neckerchiefs and she’s grateful the Doctor didn’t actually plan for them to run. It would be nearly impossible to shoot off a neckerchief without injuring him somehow. As the runners sing their benediction – once in Spanish and then in Basque – River hums along under her breath, though she knows all the words. She doesn’t want to make the Doctor suspicious.

 

When the first rocket is set off, signaling the opening of the corral gate for the runners, River doesn’t flinch. She leans her head back against the Doctor’s shoulder and smiles as he kisses her neck, his long fingers stroking her hip gently.

 

“Having fun yet?”

 

She nods, reaching around to stroke at the fine hairs at the back of his neck. “It’s a lovely present, sweetie.”

 

He sighs into her ear. “Then why do I sense a _but_ at the end of that sentence?”

 

“Well…”

 

“Hush.” He scowls. “That was not supposed to be dirty.”

 

In the distance, the second rocket is set off – the bulls have been released.

 

River tenses. “Doctor, is that a Slitheen?”

 

He perks up immediately, glancing around. “Where?”

 

She slips from his grasp and leaps over the barricade with ease as the sound of hooves rumbles the ground beneath her feet. With a bright laugh, she begins to run. Just as she’d expected, he follows her. He always follows her – headlong into danger if he must. She rather loves that about him.

 

He catches up with her quickly, snatching her hand in his and lacing their fingers together as they run and this, this is her favorite bit. Running hand in hand with him anywhere, everywhere. She expects him to yank her into an alley or over the barricade and out of the way of danger. She expects at least a scolding as they try to outrun the very angry bulls, but he surprises her by doing none of those things.

 

The Doctor laughs as they run, gripping her hand tightly, grinning breathlessly and utterly joyous. River laughs with him, so full of love for this man she could float away with it. He is beautiful like this and she cherishes his profile as they run for their lives, his face lit up with childish glee at the thrill of being chased. He’s over a thousand years old and he still approaches everything with the same excitement he had the first time.

 

Being chased is their specialty and they’re one step ahead of the bulls as they lead them right into the Bull Ring. Their feet pound against the dirt as they race across the ring and River leaps over the side neatly, dusting herself off and panting but so, _so_ invigorated. The Doctor hops onto the ledge, swings his legs over the side and pulls her into the space between his legs, kissing her hungrily. She clings to him with a moan and the ground trembles beneath them, the sound of danger not far behind making it all the more thrilling.

 

“You’re not angry,” she observes breathlessly, when he finally pulls away and hops off the side of the ring.

 

He scoffs, brushing his hair out of his eyes and looking smug. “Like I didn’t know you’d never just watch. You, River Song, are not an observer.”

 

Swaying toward him, she sighs. “You know me so well.”

 

The Doctor taps her on the nose. “Happy anniversary, honey.”

 

-

 

_But you know: you know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have clutched every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried away by goblins._

 

Something is wrong.

 

He’s dressed in his top hat and tails, his hair newly trimmed as he leans against her doorway and beams at her, but she knows him well enough to see the cracks in his smile, the sadness in his eyes. “Fancy an evening out, Professor Song?”

 

Getting an answer out of him won’t be as easy as simply asking, so she puts on a smile and curls her hands into the lapels of his coat, tugging him close enough to brush her lips against his. “What do you have in mind?”

 

“Oh, not much,” he says, hand curled possessively at her hip. “Just a quick trip. Maybe stop at the Singing Towers.”

 

River squeals, the utter wrongness of his demeanor forgotten for a moment as she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him soundly. She’s been asking to go for centuries and he always denies her, muttering vehemently, _not yet_. She would have gone by herself but something told her it should be something they shared so she’d waited until he deemed it the right occasion.

 

“Finally time, is it?” She asks, pulling back to nuzzle her nose against his.

 

If anything, he shrinks in on himself defensively as he nods, voice hoarse, “Yes. It’s time.”

 

They picnic on a hill, sitting on a blanket spread out on the grass and chasing down tiny sandwiches and 21st century milk chocolate truffles with champagne. The grass is almost luminescent and River swipes her fingers gently over the glowing blades as the Towers begin to sing. The Doctor is still acting oddly, watching her like he hasn’t seen her in years and he wants to drink in everything about her that he’s forgotten. He touches her frequently and with a hint of desperation in every caress of his fingers, every brush of his lips.

 

She settles into the crook of his arm now and he clutches her to his side, his face buried in her hair and he isn’t even paying attention to the Towers at all. She turns briefly from the spectacle in front of her to take his face in her hands, looking into tear-filled hazel eyes and feeling so lost. “What’s wrong, my love? You’re hiding something from me.”

 

He shakes his head, taking her hands and pulling them from his face to kiss her knuckles. “Nothing is wrong. I’ve just missed you.”

 

She softens, turning her hands over and joining their fingers together. “How long has it been for you?”

 

“Five minutes is too long,” he whispers, and pulls her into his arms, cradling her to his chest as the song around them reaches its crescendo.

 

River holds him close and threads her fingers through his hair.

 

He is doing his best to lie to her, hiding behind a brittle, ill-constructed mask but River has worn one of her own often enough in her life to recognize his. He is grieving but he has already lost Amy and Rory ages ago. He is between companions but the last one had chosen to leave on her own. Nothing tragic there. And this is not the grief he feels when he cannot save a person or an entire race. This is deeper, personal.

 

He is grieving someone close to him and he won’t – _can’t_ , perhaps – tell her who.

 

Something terrible and knowing settles in River’s stomach, like she has just swallowed a mouthful of stones, and she realizes. He is grieving for her.

 

Wherever he just came from, whatever had happened on an adventure with her, the time had finally come. Somewhere, somewhen, all that recklessness and lust for adventure had finally caught up with her. The Doctor is here because he just lost her and he’s trying to reassure himself that there is more to come. It isn’t over. She had felt that way too, witnessing his regeneration into his twelfth self. When she’d finally come across her Doctor again, she’d run to him and threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his neck and just breathing him in. Her Doctor.

 

She hasn’t seen that regeneration again, since the fields of Trenzalore. She wonders sometimes if she’ll ever see the rugged face of the twelfth Doctor again or if she was only meant to be there for her Doctor’s end and to send him on his way to a new beginning. One without her. And it should hurt to think about that – and in a way, it does – but mostly, she is just happy he continues, long after she is gone. The universe needs him far more than she ever will.

 

She hopes that her death had been a good one, a noble one. She hopes it was exciting and breathless and that she fought, right up to the very end. She hopes she died for him. But as the Doctor clings to her now, the song of the Towers ringing in her ears as she feels his hot tears against her skin, she hopes with all her might that it is a very long time from now.

 

She hasn’t finished running yet.

 

-

 

_There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable._

 

She has been so stupid.

 

She’d thought her death was so far away, she thought she’d be with her Doctor when it happened and she couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s here, now. With a man who is the Doctor but not hers, a man who looks at her with suspicion and terror, a man who has no idea how precious their life together will be to him. And it isn’t fair.

 

He’d gotten his goodbye at the Singing Towers but she hadn’t known. She didn’t get her goodbye. She wants to be angry as she knocks him out and handcuffs him, but she can’t and she grits her teeth against the hot tears burning her eyes. He has known their whole lives that this was coming for her, burying the grief deep but feeling it grow more difficult to bear every time he saw her, with every moment he fell in love with her. Oh, her poor love. She would not wish such a burden on him. But she is selfish, just as he is, and she will not change one line.

 

She remembers what a wreck he had been after he lost her parents and wonders who will be with him now. Who will pick up the pieces and make sure he eats and sleeps and interacts with the universe? She is afraid for him more so than she is afraid of what awaits her.

 

Looking down at the young face in front of her now, River bends and brushes her lips across his forehead. “Goodbye, my love.”

 

For him, they are just beginning and she wishes she could tell him how very much he has to look forward to, just as he’d told her so long ago, looking into her eyes on a barren field. The adventures are over for her now – and the part of her that is still Melody wails and cries at the injustice of it but River is just grateful she ever had any of it in the first place, the light in the darkness that has been most of her life – but those adventures are waiting for him now. She envies him that.

 

Hurriedly, River reaches for her diary to scrawl one last entry before she goes, the last entry he will ever read – and she knows one day, when the grief isn’t so raw, he will read it. She wants to leave him with hope, with love. She wants him to know she was happy, despite it all and maybe even because of it.

 

_I love. I have loved. I will love._

-

 

After the Singing Towers, there is only one place left for him to go. The Fields of Trenzalore had been a death sentence before and he’d done all he could to avoid it but now, now it’s his salvation. He lies in a pool of his own blood but he can’t feel anything but the soft pressure of River’s arms around him. He’s so grateful that she is here with him, one last time. It seems fitting that she should see his end – or the end of this him – so early in her timestream. She is so young now and so far from her end, just as he had been when he’d seen hers.

 

She cradles his weakening body to her and sobs, like her hearts are well and truly shattered, like he won’t come back in a blaze of light, reborn from the ashes. He won’t be her Doctor, of course, not to her. And she is so like him, his River – so very selfish. He rather loves her for it. And he tells her so now, one last time. It’s something he didn’t say nearly enough during their life together but she knows. He hopes she knows.

 

The field around him is in ruins but he doesn’t take his eyes from her – green eyes filled with tears, those glorious curls framing her face. He takes it all in and barely even blinks. He wants her to be the last thing this face sees. He holds on for as long as he can, drinking in his last moments. He loved being this Doctor. Eleven had been his lucky number – it had given him her, and his Ponds and a love of bowties he rather hopes he carries into his next regeneration.

 

But he’s ready now. He’s ready to let go – of the heartache and the pain, the love and the fish custard. He will be someone else now, and maybe everything will hurt a little less. So he whispers his name on his final breath and closes his eyes to his wife’s lovely face.

 

We did run, didn’t we, my River?

 

When he opens his eyes again, he isn’t lying in a field, bloodied and battered. He is whole and healed and standing in a garden. He beams, tears of gratitude stinging his eyes – so very humany, even now – as he sends a silent thanks to the Old Girl for never letting him down, for always taking him where he needs to go.

 

He takes a moment to check himself over, tugging at the lapels of his frock coat, straightening his bowtie, licking his fingers and slicking back his hair. He checks his breath, realizes that it would be rather silly to have bad breath in the afterlife and shakes his head, scolding himself for being a nervous idiot even here. Satisfied at last, he looks up and the first thing he sees are sunflowers.

 

And in the sea of bright yellow, he spots a riot of ginger curls and smirks. “Hi, honey,” he says, watching her stiffen and turn to him with eyes of incredulity and hope. “I’m home.”

 

_He is coming and I am here._


End file.
